Charles Johnson ’54, co-chair of the mutual fund Franklin Resources, has given $250 million to the university to support the building of two new residential colleges, according to an email from University President Peter Salovey this morning. The largest gift in Yale’s history will bring the University significantly closer to the fundraising goal it has set out to reach before breaking ground.
“I believe Charlie’s leadership will inspire others to come forward with the additional $80 million we must still raise to provide access to the world’s best undergraduate education to more of the world’s best students,” Salovey said in the email.
Johnson has made significant donations to Yale in the past, funding programs such as the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and Johnson Center for the Study of American Diplomacy. His donations have also provided for the renovation of the Yale Bowl and the creation of Yale’s first all-season outdoor athletics field, all of which Salovey noted in his email.
The building of the new colleges, which are yet to be named, will allow Yale College to expand enrollment by approximately 15 percent. Salovey said the increase will allow the university to admit deserving applicants who should not be denied a place at Yale. Since 1969, when the University extended admission to women, the number of applicants has quadrupled.
In 2006, Johnson was ranked as the 52nd wealthiest American, according to Forbes. His current net worth is estimated at $5.7 billion.
A University committee released a revised set of tailgating policies Thursday afternoon in response to the death of one person and injury of two others at November’s Harvard-Yale game.
University President Richard Levin and the Yale Officers approved four changes recommended by the committee. Under the new rules, kegs and “box trucks” will not be allowed at tailgates. There will be a vehicle-free student tailgating area, and students will have to leave the tailgate area by kickoff. University Vice President and Secretary Linda Lorimer said the committee recognized the popularity of tailgating among students and alumni, but was focused on creating a safer environment in light of last November’s incident.
“First and foremost, we believe there are ways to continue the tradition of tailgating,” Lorimer said. “But we did recognize that there were changes in our practices that would contribute to having a safer and more enjoyable event associated with athletic matches.”
The changes follow the Nov. 19 death of Nancy Barry, which occurred when a U-Haul bound for the Sigma Phi Epsilon tailgate at the Yale Bowl lost control and accelerated into a crowd of people in the Bowl’s Lot D.
A New Haven Police Department forensics investigation, begun immediately after the crash, is still ongoing, and NHPD spokesman David Hartman said Jan. 12 that it would be “quite some time” before the investigation is concluded.
Lorimer said the committee reviewed both Yale’s policies and those of other universities, as well as visiting stadiums at peer schools like Harvard and Princeton, in determining the new tailgate regulations.
“I’m hoping that the students don’t think we’re overreacting, particularly since it’s Princeton and Harvard,” Lorimer said. “But we think that these are responsible guidelines for going forward.”
The committee outlined its changes to the rules in a report emailed to Yale College faculty, students, masters, deans and members of the Athletic Department. The recommendation to ban kegs at tailgates cited similar practices at Harvard and Princeton. Large box trucks, including U-Hauls, will also be banned. The new regulations take effect immediately.
Tailgating logistics, which include parking, traffic control and crowd control, will be examined next by administrators and stadium safety experts, Lorimer wrote in the report.
Hartman said he thought the new rules were “well thought out” and would improve the safety of events at the Yale Bowl, but he added that banning kegs is different than banning all alcohol.
“One should be a bit cautious when relying on the elimination of kegs as opposed to the elimination of alcohol in general,” he said. “One can get more impaired off a shot of whiskey than from kegs, but that said, I understand the atmosphere is a lot different when you tap a keg, there’s a more free to drink atmosphere.”
The committee’s report comes 61 days after the fatal crash.
UPDATE: 5:40 p.m. A U-Haul truck driven by a Yale undergraduate struck three people, killing one, shortly before 10 a.m. Saturday at the tailgate before the Yale-Harvard football game, New Haven Police Department spokesman David Hartman said.
At 9:49 a.m. on Saturday, a U-Haul swerved and accelerated into the Yale Bowl’s D-Lot, Hartman said, hitting the three victims before crashing into a smaller U-Haul. Nancy Barry, a 30-year-old woman from Salem, Mass., was taken to Yale-New Haven Hospital and pronounced dead at 10:16 a.m.
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The section of the tailgate where the collision occurred was closed off so an NHPD accident reconstruction team could investigate, Hartman said. Police took Brendan Ross ’13, who was driving the vehicle at the time of the incident, to NHPD headquarters on Union Avenue for questioning. Ross is not currently in custody and has not been charged with anything related to the incident.
When reached by phone Sunday morning, Ross declined to comment. A press release from the NHPD said Ross passed a field sobriety test after the accident. In a Sunday afternoon statement, William Dow ’63, Ross’ New Haven-based lawyer, said Ross and his family expressed their sincere condolences at Barry’s death, adding that it appeared to be the result of a “vehicle malfunction.”
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A second victim, 30-year-old Sarah Short SOM ’13, is in a serious but stable condition at Y-NHH. The third victim, Harvard employee Elizabeth Dernbach, was taken to St. Raphael’s Hospital and treated for minor injuries, Hartman confirmed.
Further details on the incident will not be available in the next few days, until the NHPD completes its full forensics investigation, Hartman said.
The U-Haul that struck the victims was bound for a tailgate put on by the fraternity Sigma Phi Epsilon. Drew Marconi ’13, a Sig Ep vice president and spokesman, did not confirm that the U-Haul was a Sig Ep vehicle, but said in a statement that the fraternity was cooperating with law enforcement officials as they investigate the incident.
“We’re deeply saddened by the events of today’s tailgate, and our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families,” Marconi said. “Our leadership board and national representatives are currently working to understand the details of the situation and assess what has transgressed. We hope to know more soon.”
Angela Ramirez ’12, who was roughly 10 feet away from the truck as it was accelerating, said the U-Haul’s approach and the noise of its acceleration caused a commotion in the nearby crowd.
“There was a wave of screams when we saw the truck was going through the crowd, then a lot of ‘Oh my God’ and ‘What the hell is going on?’” Ramirez said. “There was one girl by me who was hyperventilating because she couldn’t find her friend and thought she wasn’t okay. There was another guy who couldn’t find his friend and started crying.”
The driver looked appalled after the incident, Ramirez said, and seemed unsure what had just happened.
Tiffany Ho ’12, who was in line for an identification check when the accident occurred, said she remembered seeing the victims’ bodies on the ground, one of which was not moving.
The victims were quickly surrounded by onlookers, who were “all panicking and really confused,” Paul Robalino ’12 said, explaining that no one realized what had happened.
Police and paramedics responded quickly, Ramirez said. Multiple witnesses said they saw a police officer perform CPR on one of the victims for 10 minutes.
Ramirez said the police told tailgaters to go to the other side of the lot if they wanted to enter the tailgate grounds, and asked onlookers to leave when they began to place the victims in ambulances.
“Some people were crying, some people were in such shock they didn’t move anywhere, but most people went to the other side to get into the tailgate,” Ramirez said.
After ambulances took the victims to the hospital, those at the tailgate were unsure what to do, Ho said, adding that many students did not feel comfortable continuing to party after the incident.
“Pretty immediately the cops came and they put yellow tape all around the area,” Robalino said. “For a while we were all like ‘This is really uncomfortable, we can’t keep drinking or eating because that would be really inappropriate.’”
But as conflicting reports of the incident spread among students and alumni, the tailgate continued throughout the morning largely uninterrupted. The music stopped after the crash, but as rumors spread that the injuries were not serious, the music and partying resumed, Robalino said.
In a Saturday afternoon statement, Yale spokesman Tom Conroy said the University “will be undertaking a full review of the policies and regulations relating to tail-gating before athletics events.”
“Our efforts now focus on providing any support needed to the members of our community and to our many guests from Cambridge and elsewhere,” Conroy wrote in the statement.
At the game, action halted and the crowd hushed at halftime as spectators in the Yale Bowl stopped for a moment of silence. The announcer, Mark Ryba, delivered a statement from the University confirming that one victim had died and two were injured in the crash, and offering condolences to those involved.
UPDATE: 11:57 a.m. A U-Haul truck driven by a Yale undergraduate struck three people, killing one, shortly before 10 a.m. today at the tailgate before the Yale-Harvard football game, New Haven Police Department spokesman David Hartman said.
At around 9:49 a.m., a U-Haul swerved and accelerated into the Yale Bowl’s D-Lot, Hartman said, hitting the three victims before crashing into a smaller U-Haul. Nancy Barry, a 30-year-old woman from Salem, Mass., was taken to Yale-New Haven Hospital and pronounced dead at 10:16 a.m.
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The section of the tailgate where the collision occurred was closed off so an NHPD accident reconstruction team could investigate, Hartman said. Police took Brendan Ross ’13, who was driving the vehicle at the time of the incident, to NHPD headquarters on Union Avenue for questioning. Ross is not currently in custody and has not been charged with anything related to the incident.
When reached by phone Sunday morning, Ross declined to comment.
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A second victim, 30-year-old Sarah Short SOM ’13, is in a serious but stable condition at Y-NHH. The third victim, Harvard employee Elizabeth Dernbach, was taken to St. Raphael’s Hospital and treated for minor injuries, Hartman confirmed.
Further details on the incident will not be available in the next few days, until the NHPD completes its full forensics investigation, Hartman said.
The U-Haul that struck the victims was bound for a tailgate put on by the fraternity Sigma Phi Epsilon. Drew Marconi ’13, a Sig Ep vice president and spokesman, did not confirm that the U-Haul was a Sig Ep vehicle, but said in a statement that the fraternity was cooperating with law enforcement officials as they investigate the incident.
“We’re deeply saddened by the events of today’s tailgate, and our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families,” Marconi said. “Our leadership board and national representatives are currently working to understand the details of the situation and assess what has transgressed. We hope to know more soon.”
Angela Ramirez ’12, who was roughly 10 feet away from the truck as it was accelerating, said the U-Haul’s approach and the noise of its acceleration caused a commotion in the nearby crowd.
“There was a wave of screams when we saw the truck was going through the crowd, then a lot of ‘Oh my God’ and ‘What the hell is going on?’” Ramirez said. “There was one girl by me who was hyperventilating because she couldn’t find her friend and thought she wasn’t okay. There was another guy who couldn’t find his friend and started crying.”
The driver looked appalled after the incident, Ramirez said, and seemed unsure what had just happened.
Tiffany Ho ’12, who was in line for an identification check when the accident occurred, said she remembered seeing the victims’ bodies on the ground, one of which was not moving.
The victims were quickly surrounded by onlookers, who were “all panicking and really confused,” Paul Robalino ’12 said, explaining that no one realized what had happened.
Police and paramedics responded quickly, Ramirez said. Multiple witnesses said they saw a police officer perform CPR on one of the victims for 10 minutes.
Ramirez said the police told tailgaters to go to the other side of the lot if they wanted to enter the tailgate grounds, and asked onlookers to leave when they began to place the victims in ambulances.
“Some people were crying, some people were in such shock they didn’t move anywhere, but most people went to the other side to get into the tailgate,” Ramirez said.
After ambulances took the victims to the hospital, those at the tailgate were unsure what to do, Ho said, adding that many students did not feel comfortable continuing to party after the incident.
“Pretty immediately the cops came and they put yellow tape all around the area,” Robalino said. “For a while we were all like ‘This is really uncomfortable, we can’t keep drinking or eating because that would be really inappropriate.’”
But as conflicting reports of the incident spread among students and alumni, the tailgate continued throughout the morning largely uninterrupted. The music stopped after the crash, but as rumors spread that the injuries were not serious, the music and partying resumed, Robalino said.
In a Saturday afternoon statement, Yale spokesman Tom Conroy said the University “will be undertaking a full review of the policies and regulations relating to tail-gating before athletics events.”
“Our efforts now focus on providing any support needed to the members of our community and to our many guests from Cambridge and elsewhere,” Conroy wrote in the statement.
At the game, action halted and the crowd hushed at halftime as spectators in the Yale Bowl stopped for a moment of silence. The announcer, Mark Ryba, delivered a statement from the University confirming that one victim had died and two were injured in the crash, and offering condolences to those involved.
New Haven Police Department Chief Frank Limon will resign this November after a tough 20 months in the top job.
Mayor John DeStefano Jr. announced Limon’s resignation, effective Nov. 15, at a City Hall press conference Monday afternoon, ending speculation that erupted over the weekend following reports Limon had cleared out his office and local condominium in advance of a trip to Illinois that started Friday. Those reports suggested the chief was not simply on leave to recuperate his health and attend a police conference, but rather making a permanent exit from the department, which he joined last April.
“[The decision was reached] after two weeks of discussions regarding [Limon’s] personal circumstances and goals for the department,” DeStefano said at the press conference, adding that he will announce Limon’s replacement at a press conference 3 p.m. Tuesday.
Since arriving from Chicago, Limon has presided over a 9 percent reduction in the Elm City’s overall crime rate this year, even as New Haven slugs through its deadliest year since 1994 — the homicide count for 2011 sits at 27. Calls for Limon’s departure picked up after the NHPD Union’s Feb. 3 landslide vote of “No Confidence” against him, with members citing departmental mismanagement and inability to connect with rank-and-file officers.
But DeStefano said that Limon’s departure was due to mutual agreement, and that he had no cause to dismiss the chief. Limon will continue his contractual relationship with the department through June 2012 as a consultant, DeStefano said, continuing his initiatives with violence and community intervention. He added that Limon will earn $90,000 during this time, a package that came from discussions these past two weeks.
Even if he wanted to, DeStefano could not have sacked Limon thanks to the city’s charter, which offers job protection to the police chief through his four-year contract unless he commits some criminal activity or egregious offense.
Still, much of Monday’s attention focused on the secrecy behind Limon’s departure. As of Sunday evening, both City Hall spokesman Adam Joseph and NHPD spokesman David Hartman stressed that Limon was still police chief despite his departure. Those claims ran counter to those of mayoral candidate Jeffrey Kerekes and former NHPD union president Sgt. Louis Cavaliere, who said they received multiple reports from officers that Limon’s departure was permanent.
“My concern, like that of a lot of other people, is why the city didn’t handle the information [of Limon’s departure] properly,” said NHPD Union president Arpad Tolnay in an interview Monday before DeStefano’s press conference. “I’m going to step out of a limb and say, if this is a small peek at how politics is conducted here in New Haven, then maybe it’s time to switch things up.”
When asked if his actions amounted to lying, DeStefano replied that he acted as he saw fit. But he said that “speculation had become so rampant” that he felt it would have been a mistake not to announce Limon’s departure today.
Following the press conference, Kerekes said that DeStefano still had some questions to answer regarding the manner of Limon’s departure.
“It’s a credibility issue,” Kerekes said, adding that neither the public nor the Board of Aldermen had a say in selecting the new chief. Kerekes is running to unseat DeStefano in the city’s Nov. 8 mayoral election.
In an interview Sunday night, Kerekes charged that Limon’s departure would be the result of mismanagement starting at City Hall, where DeStefano has gone through six police chiefs in his 18-year tenure because of his tendency to “micro-manage”. DeStefano has caused morale issues within the department because officers are promoted “based on who they know and not what they do,” Kerekes said.
Hartman deferred Monday afternoon to City Hall for comment on the selection of the new chief, explaining that the NHPD does not appoint its new chief.
Ward 12 Alderman Gerald Antunes, who serves as the vice chair of the city’s public safety committee, said the Board of Alderman has not yet been given information about or an opportunity to weigh in on Limon’s replacement. He said his committee had expected the chief to resign for some time, though declined to say how long he has known about the situation.
When asked whether Dean Esserman, a former Providence Police Department chief and NHPD assistant chief, was in contention to replace Limon, Tolnay said he had heard the name discussed. Tolnay added he was unsure about other individuals in the running for the chief’s job.
Current Assistant Chief John Velleca will serve as the department’s acting chief until Limon’s resignation in November.
Yale Police Department Chief Ronnell Higgins said though he was similarly in the dark about who the mayor has picked to run the NHPD, he looks forward to working with Velleca and the new chief. The impact of the new NHPD chief on the YPD’s operations will be minimal, he added.
“When I learned the news [of Limon’s departure], I immediately called the acting chief and stressed our commitment to working with him and he expressed the same back to me,” Higgins said.
Velleca currently heads the NHPD’s investigative services division.
Yale’s endowment returned 21.9 percent on its investments in the fiscal year that ended June 30, Chief Investment Officer David Swensen announced today.
Yale’s investments gained a total of $3.6 billion in the 2011 fiscal year to boost the current endowment value to $19.4 billion. Buoyed by the strong endowment performance, the University will siphon more funds from the endowment toward its operating budget than in the previous year, allocating $992 million for campus-wide expenses. In fiscal year 2010, the University put $986 million aside for the same purpose.
The double-digit jump in returns may indicate that University finances are recovering from the aftereffects of the 2008 recession, which caused Yale’s endowment to fall nearly 25 percent that year. After multiple rounds of budget cuts across the University and positive endowment reports from peer institutions, Provost Peter Salovey said Tuesday that he believes University finances are finally stabilizing.
Still, experts have said that figures reported by colleges and universities for fiscal year 2011 will not show the full impact of the period’s turbulent markets. Yale’s endowment also has yet to return to its pre-recession levels: Before the 2008 downtown, the endowment climbed to an all-time high of $22.9 billion.
“This is great that [the endowment] is recovering, but it’s not above where it was before and it may go down again,” said Sandy Baum, chairwoman of the economics department at Skidmore College and a senior policy analyst at the College Board. “Look what’s happened to the market in the last two weeks. For the past couple of weeks, the market has been very volatile.”
Despite that volatility, experts projected that academic institutions would likely report returns of 20 percent or higher for fiscal year 2011.
Yale’s 21.9 percent return is a drastic improvement from the endowment’s performance in fiscal year 2010, when the University posted an 8.9 percent return — the worst in the Ivy League. Yale’s most recent performance has already edged that of Harvard, which returned 21.4 percent in the 2011 fiscal year. Other peer institutions have yet to release their reports.
Baum cautioned against reading too much into one-year numbers released by colleges and universities, noting that long-term results are better indications of how an institution’s investments are faring. But Yale administrators have emphasized that the University’s nontraditional investment model is designed for a long-term view.
“The way in which Yale’s endowment compares to other university endowments on a year to two year basis is not especially important,” Provost Peter Salovey told the News last week. “What is important is that our approach can allow us to do better than a traditional endowment over longer periods of time — say five to 10 years — and with less risk.”
Pioneered by Swensen, Yale’s investing strategy favors illiquid assets such as real estate, oil, timber and gas, but also incorporates those more easily converted to cash. It propelled Yale to returns near or above 20 percent between 2004 and 2007, but impeded the University’s financial immediately after the recession.
Yale’s endowment currently ranks second only to Harvard’s, which is valued at $32 billion.
UPDATE: 4:52 p.m. School of Music employee John Miller MUS ’07 jumped from the fourth story window of Hendrie Hall at 165 Elm St. and was discovered early this morning, New Haven Police Department spokesman Officer Dave Hartman said.
Yale School of Music Dean Robert Blocker first identified Miller in an email sent around 8 a.m. to students, faculty and staff of the school. Miller, a trombonist, is the school’s manager of community programs. A Yale employee passing near the parking lot after the incident said the victim’s responsibilities included organizing music students who work with New Haven Public Schools students. (Read a News story on the program Miller organized.)
Yale Police are investigating the incident, Hartman said.
University Spokesman Tom Conroy declined to comment on details of the incident and the identity of anyone involved. University spokeswoman Kianti Roman confirmed that the incident was an “apparent suicide” and said the University is attempting to notify the family.
Vice President and University Secretary Linda Lorimer informed the Yale community of Miller’s death in a campus-wide email at 3:51 p.m. Thursday.
“John was well-known and much admired at Yale and in the New Haven and wider communities,” Lorimer wrote.
In addition to his job at the School of Music, Miller served as music director at New Haven’s John C. Daniels School. He spearheaded a program that sent School of Music students to teach at Daniels, which sends promising students to the selective Connecticut Music Educators Association Southern Regional Middle School Concert Festival annually.
“[The School] has many students that build relationships with young musicians,” Miller told the News in March 2010. “It’s very motivating for kids [to see] what they could be if they continue performing and practicing.”
Morris Sumpter, a cook at the Graduate Club adjacent to Hendrie Hall at 155 Elm Street, said he swiped into work at 6:22 a.m. and looked out the window by 6:25 a.m. to see Miller lying on the pavement.
Two Yale custodians were the first to arrive at the scene, Sumpter said. Members of the fire department arrived shortly afterward and tried to perform CPR on the victim, he said. Police then towed a car from the parking lot while an ambulance transported Miller to the hospital, a Yale custodian who works in Hendrie Hall said.
At about 10 a.m., police investigators were removing a bloody tie and other clothing from the rear of Hendrie Hall, a School of Music building. There was also blood on the pavement of the parking lot, approximately 10 feet back from the building. Two fourth story windows overlooking the rear of Hendrie Hall remain open and have no screens.
A portion of the parking lot behind Hendrie Hall has been sealed off, and the building is closed until further notice, a police officer at the front of the building said. Hendrie Hall houses the School of Music’s brass, percussion and opera departments, along with practice spaces and faculty offices for undergraduate musical organizations.
Check back for more updates.
Correction
An earlier version of this story misstated the name of the John C. Daniels School.
UPDATE: 5:00 p.m. The estate of former pharmacology student Annie Le GRD ’13 has served the University with a wrongful death lawsuit, the Le family lawyer Joseph Tacopina told the News Tuesday in an email.
University Spokesman Tom Conroy said the University plans to “respond to the suit and its claims in the legal arena.”
“Yale believes there is no basis for the civil suit filed on behalf of the estate of Annie Le. Yale had no information indicating that [former lab technician and Le’s killer] Raymond Clark was capable of committing this terrible crime, and no reasonable security measures could have prevented his unforeseeable act,” Conroy wrote in a statement. “Annie Le’s murder shocked and deeply saddened the entire Yale community. As a community we united to support and comfort her family and loved ones, and create a lasting memorial to her life. This lawsuit serves neither justice nor Annie’s memory, and the University will defend against it as appropriate.”
The Le family first hired lawyers last summer to privately look into the death. Last September, Brian King, an attorney with the New York-based firm Tacopina Seigel & Turano, P.C., appeared at a routine court hearing for Clark and afterwards spoke with the media outside the courthouse, where he raised questions about the University’s handling of the tragedy.
“Why wasn’t anybody helping her when this was happening?” King said. “Where was anybody? Apparently Yale has police, also have security. What was their role that day in checking for her? So those are the things that we’re looking into right now.”
University General Counsel Dorothy Robinson said then that she had not heard anything about a lawsuit.
Joseph Lopez, one of the public defenders of Raymond Clark III, the man convicted for Le’s murder, made a prescient prediction at the time: That even if King’s firm were to file a lawsuit, it would be after the criminal case had been concluded. Clark was sentenced to 44 years in prison in June.
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